An expansion of this falsehood by the echo chamber of right-wing and alt-right supporters claims that the Ninth District Appeals Court is "a rogue court" that gets reversed by the Supreme Court 80 per cent of the time. It's actually 0.12 per cent -140 cases reversed or vacated in 10 years out of a total 114,199 cases completed by the same Appeals Court.
Figures don't lie but liars can figure, goes the saying.
Fact-checking is necessary but the bigger picture is more important.
Trump's lies are distractions from accountability for his deeds but the method of his seeming madness is to undermine confidence in the judiciary and to assert as his 31-year-old year old senior adviser Stephen Miller put it: "The president's authority is not to be questioned."
Those are the prerequisites of a dictator.
It would be generous to ascribe such a comment to youth, inexperience, over -zealous sycophancy or ignorance of the US constitution, except that the comment is of a piece with the entirety of Trump's recent attacks as a means of fending off criticism.
His tactics seem to be working so far. A recent study by a Canadian graduate student of Trump voters who expressed some regret over their votes on social media, found that theirs was not a disagreement over policy but rather over manners.
The danger to democracy of a power-hungry chief executive has yet to achieve currency among ordinary Trump voters. Many support the travel ban without concern for the constitutional questions it raises about the necessity of non-discriminatory rulemaking and, more importantly, for the protections of liberty inherent in the checks and balances in any action being taken under the rule of law.
If Trump's assertions of executive absolutism unhampered by judiciary oversight are the goal of his attempted delegitimising of judicial authority, they pose a serious threat to the democratic structure.
Compounding these efforts at accrual of untrammeled power are his recent statements denigrating the news media. It was not enough for Trump to claim that the press, not himself, is untruthful. Now he tweets that the media is "the enemy of the people".
Tinpot despots from Chávez to Erdoğan, Sisi to Mugabe, all follow the same game plan.
First they attack and threaten the press with deliberate and ominous intensity. The press, demanding transparency, is cast as oppositional and obstructive.
As popular support for the media dwindles ("Who do you believe more, me or them?") the leader starts imposing restrictions.
America is not Venezuela, nor Zimbabwe. America was great before Trump ever came along. It was great as an experiment in democracy, flawed in its application, tainted by original sins of ethnic cleansing and of slavery, but nonetheless, slowly bending its arc of history toward social justice under law. That progression must be defended.
The bright shining exception to Trump's advance is coming from the large numbers of people who are organising themselves through social media to resist his power grab.
Paradoxically, Trump has awakened a sleepy electorate which is increasingly resolute, increasingly tech savvy, and determined to save the republic from the excesses of its leader.
*Jay Kuten is an American-trained forensic psychiatrist who emigrated to New Zealand for the fly fishing. He spent 40 years comforting the afflicted and intends to spend the rest afflicting the comfortable.
